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So, instead of violently prying the hard-earned cash from your grasp, perhaps we could reflect on how wealth as a blessing can be utilised in relation to the poor. In short, if we have been blessed, how should we treat the poor?
Recently, there was an incident that took place in another country, famous as the Land of the Free. At present, the southern border has been breached by economic refugees, all desperate for a better life. The Governor of a state besieged by these illegal migrants decided to send 50 aliens in a jet-plane to Martha’s Vineyard—a supposedly self-declared sanctuary island. The reaction to this so-called political ploy was not only explosive but revealing. In fact, the same reactions to these migrants being bussed away from the border states were detected in other similar sanctuary cities.
Politics is always dirty but away from taking sides, the reactions possibly expose a chink in the armour of those who claim to care for the poor. After all they proudly declared themselves to be sanctuary communities and cities.
Their responses can be understood if we consider a condition known as addiction to love. It is a craving for the feelings associated with falling in love. Those who have been in love know that being in love evokes a kind of warm fuzzy feeling that can be therapeutic. It feels good to love and to be loved.
You may have heard of this phenomenon called “disaster tourism”. An example we are familiar with is known as “rubber necking”. Imagine E3 near Kempas where there is a massive pileup of cars. The side of the highway with no incident or mishap is also jammed because necks are craning and straining to see how badly smashed the cars are or better, to read the number plates so that you can buy 4D. That is just voyeurism. What disaster tourism does for some is to give the opportunity to virtue signal—a kind of moral grandstanding that one is there just after a calamity in the thick of where the action is.
To love the poor, it demands more than “virtue signalling”. According to James Bartholomew, the journalist who popularised the term, “Saying the right thing violently on Twitter is much easier than real kindness”. To love the poor, requires more than just proclaiming that we have a place for them “theoretically”. To learn how to love the poor, turn to the most relevant and recent example: St Teresa of Calcutta. She embraced the poor where they were. In short, it means getting our hands dirty, not because the poor are dirty, but rather getting down on our knees to serve the poor.
If we idolise the poor, it is easy to keep them at arm’s length. We create a category in our head that there is a group for whom we need to champion that easily we lose sight of where they are. We group them into a generic whole so that we can easily handle them and in that way, we can feel good about ourselves.
Over the years, Sunday schools throughout the various parishes have tried to conscientise children on the reality of the poor. One way of doing it is to organise the catechism children to visit the poor. Have you ever noticed that come Christmas time, so many companies and corporations are falling over themselves trying to achieve their quota of CSR? However, it is observed that when children are brought to the homes of the aged or to orphanages, many of them will group or gather amongst themselves because they do not know what to do or how to behave with those not of their social status or standing.
Maybe awkwardness is a reflexion of the reality that poverty is too profound for any individual to handle. We may never have adequate resources needed to feed all the poor in the world. In fact, not in a million years will we be able to solve structural poverty. Why? Whatever framework we may come up with to overcome poverty, soon enough other forms of exploitations will emerge from whatever loopholes there are in the structure. Think of the Telcos who participated in soliciting donations. Can you imagine the cut they took for each Ringgit a person donates? As high as 30%. So much for CSR.
The point here is not fixing poverty as if we hold the answer to abolishing it. Instead, what is necessary for our salvation is to take more than a topical interest in poverty. When we reduce poverty to an ideology, it is easy to shy away from being personal and when we are not able to be intimate, the tendency is to virtue signal, that is, express pious sentiments to indicate how good we have been.
In the Gospel, the story revolves around Dives, who is sadly unnamed, and a man, who is starving outside the gate, named Lazarus. It was not a story of a stratum of people, that is, the poor class. If anything, the contrary is more condemning because Dives is not a personal name per se. In Latin, Dives means “rich” and it can easily be translated generically as the “rich class”. In other words, this story is personal in the sense that this specific Dives could have befriended not THE poor as a class but this particular poor man, Lazarus.
The saints routinely model for us their own interactions with individual poor people, not just the poor as a stratum of society. Mother Teresa was saintly because she held and helped so many dying lepers. For her, everyone was important as an individual. In short, her hands, feet and blue-lined cotton-white sari habit were soiled simply because she routinely engaged poor persons.
The way for St Teresa of Calcutta to love the poor was to love Jesus Christ. She and her sisters spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament every morning before they go out to serve the poor. The more we love Jesus personally, the more we can see Him in individual poor persons. “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was naked and you clothed me… etc”. There is no other way for us to love the poor except personally. Loving the poor ideological can only take us so far. It is when Jesus becomes Whom we love with our heart and soul that we will willingly walk that extra mile even for the poor man or woman who can be ungrateful and who does not deserve our care and concern.
The Gospel of Dives and Lazarus shows us that real contact with an individual poor keeps our love grounded and honest. It makes our love for Jesus Christ more authentic. It is good to take a keen interest in the current issues surrounding poverty but it is infinitely better to befriend, love and serve a poor person because he or she may be the only passport that opens the gates of heaven for your entrance into eternal life.
If you take the Gospel seriously, then the homily shall consist of two straightforward commands. 1. Love God. 2. Give your money to the Church.
Somehow such mandates, simple as they are, just do not cut it. Of the two, loving God sounds easy because it has been drummed into us since young. Giving your money to the Church that is a little harder to swallow. The Gospel requires a little parsing or excavating so that we may better grasp what God is asking of us.
Firstly, the scenario feels rather offensive considering our informed ethos. It would appear as if Jesus were commending someone who had been dishonest. Imagine, Jesus praising Najib for being such a crafty “Crime Minister”.
The background of the narrative is agrarian. In an agricultural society, cash is not really king. Apologies to Najib! When we speak of a town, there are no “high streets” lined with boutiques, sporting the latest range of Hermes’ Berkin bags or Bvlgari jewellery. Farm produce is the conventional currency which people appreciate most. What is the use of “money” if there is really nothing to buy? This backdrop is the context for the steward’s story.
He is to take charge of the master’s estates and to manage them in respect to the produce that is derived from renting out land. He gets a cut from the transactions with renter farmers. It is a sort of management fee. There are three ways of tenancy. For the usage of the land, the master gets 1. A percentage of the produce. It is like a kind of tithing. 2. Fixed amount regardless of how bountiful or poor the harvest may be and lastly. 3. Cold, hard cash.
In the Gospel, our steward was denounced for wastefulness, not laziness or even dishonesty. Thus he was dismissed due to the lack of accountability. However, he was quick enough to seize the opportunity to quickly work something out for himself. He reduced the debt, meaning that he simply forwent his cut for the contracts made. In a way, he was not “cheating” his master but securing a possibility of a future welcome from those to whom he has done a favour for. As such, the master cannot renege on or back out of the deal because that would constitute "mala fidei". In fact, despite the disadvantage of a reduced collection, the master’s fame would grow as the tenants will be singing the praise of his generosity.
The steward was smart or shrewd in the ways of the world. And this should characterise our relationship with regard to money, riches or possessions. However, when wealth is everything, this kind of insight might be hard to come by. I told one of our golden years aunty that the final destination where she will be going to, she cannot take her possessions with her. She had been lamenting that her phone was not working well. I suggested to her: Give away your money or spend it now. Buy a new phone.
Giving it away is one of the hardest things to do. And it is not on account of selfishness. Just to understand why it is hard, we take a side look at weight loss programmes. Do you realise that it is almost impossible to “lose weight”? Why? We naturally look for the items we have lost. Remember last week’s Lost Drachma? The lady swept clean her house to look for the missing coin. Thus, in wilfully attempting to lose weight, somehow unwittingly or unconsciously, we may be looking for the poundage we have shed. In other words, losing weight is really a losing proposition. If anything, one should desire to gain one’s optimal weight.
The point is that we are inadequate, and in our incompleteness, we tend to hold on to what we have, instead of letting it go. Our natural posture of survival is to “cling”, most especially if we have worked hard to accumulate. No one likes to see the fruit of his hard work squandered. Yet, it remains true that none of our achievements nor any portion of our collected wealth can ever cross with us through the portal of death except our merits before Christ the Lord. As Jesus Himself reminded us, “What gains a man if he wins the world but loses his soul?”.
The first lesson from the Gospel is that the astuteness praised by Jesus is not about being cunning or conniving. Instead, it is a kind of cleverness or a sense that sees the world ALWAYS through the lens of heaven. What should I do in order to gain eternal life?
Secondly, letting go is the beginning of true stewardship. The premise of Pope Francis’ “Laudato si” actually rests on a proper appreciation of stewardship. Passing through this world, that means we are no more than a watchman, an administrator or a “jaga”. We look after God’s creation in this world. Mary, the Mother of Jesus was right in her Magnificat: “He looks upon His servant in her nothingness”. We own nothing and if we do, we hold it in trust for the Lord. Many of our ecological and environmental disasters arise because we have forgotten the fundamental principle that we are no more than custodians. Trustworthiness is a mark of good stewardship.
Finally, the steward’s acumen was making arrangements that once his service was no longer needed by the master, he could secure a place amongst those whom he has helped. When we translate this into a spirituality, it is how we can be astute with regard to God’s abundant blessings and use them in a manner so as to gain a place in heaven. Wealth is never personal even though if feels very much so. It is mine. I own it. I obtain it through hard work. No matter how personal riches feel, it is gifted for sharing. If not, wealth has a way of insinuating itself into a god which is why the Gospel emphasises that a good servant knows who the boss is for he cannot be a servant of two masters. God is the only ruler who deserves our everything. It is good to be clever in the ways of the world but it is better to be wise in the ways of heaven. Better to store our treasures of goodness in heaven than to be dragged down to hell by the possessions we cling to.
Jesus is still on the way to Jerusalem. Along the journey, He seemed to have picked up an entourage which then became a perfect teaching moment for Him. What does it mean to follow Him?
His language for discipleship was unvarnished and brutally honest as He placed it in the context of “hatred” for the family. It was harsh which sounds really alien to our ears. But the point is simply that any discipleship which inevitably involves the cross cannot be but brutal and honest. For example, in those halcyon days of missionary outreach, priests, religious brothers and sisters left their homes and countries without ever seeing their motherland again. The hand that is laid to the plough should never look back. Leaving was understood as permanent.
We appeared to have lost that edge. In a way, this development reflects a progressive understanding of human psychology and sociology. We have come to accept that kith and kin are necessary to the spiritual, psychological and physical well-being of a person. But Jesus seemed to think otherwise. A good illustration to assist in understanding this kind of spirit is to appreciate the monastic vocation. The Carthusians live separated from their families and only two days a year can their families visit them. This kind of separation is sacrificially painful but view this in the context of two loves. One is good and the other is better. It is good to have the comfort of familial and friendly relationships. But it is better to belong to God alone. This kind of calling requires the virtues of fortitude and endurance.
Therefore, this calls for a calculation of the cost involved. In any relationship that is consequential, the initial period of the association can be exhilarating. The retinue or the band that tagged along with Jesus must have been thrilled to witness the ease with which He performed many miracles. Just like falling in love for the first time, it can be intoxicating. But over time, when the reality sets in, the rosy picture can take a different hue.
It is only when the going gets tough that the real cost will surface. To endure, we need strength to carry the cross that is laid upon us. Endurance stands on the firm foundation of trust in the Lord. In the 1st Reading, the reason for trusting God is because His ways are never ours. Sadly, in a self-confident world, we seem to be deadly certain that our perspective is the one which is all encompassing. We know and are sure that we are right and our approach is the correct one. In this sense, it does not matter if one were a liberal or a conservative because the relevant question to ask is what happens when one is silenced especially when one is convinced that one’s view is flawless. Ask Henri de Lubac (who later became a Cardinal) or Padre Pio. They were silenced by the Church. They were humiliated but they kept quiet and went about their business. But today anyone censored or muzzled will take to social media to justify his or her position. Nobody is silenced that easily.
The silence of people like Henri de Lubac or Padre Pio requires a lot of trust in the Lord. The “beatitudes” come from this space. When we are hated, persecuted or mistreated in our service of the Church, it is easy to sink into depression. After all, nothing is more painful than betrayal by the very institution we love, trust and serve. In order that we not be overwhelmed by treachery or give in to self-destructive behaviour, we need to believe that God will take care of us. That strength to remain steadfast can only come from deep confidence in God.
There are layers of dying to oneself before arriving at that depth of trust in the Lord. The key here is divestment. In the Gospel, Jesus spoke of possessions. Giving up physical wealth is a good prelude of letting go of our intangible possessions. However, to possess nothing is no guarantee that one trusts in the Lord. Dependence on God takes more than the lack of wealth because one can be poor and yet it does not always translate into faith in Him. In fact, the contrary could be true that one who has nothing tends to want to accumulate.
The post-Resurrection scene by the sea of Tiberias where Jesus prepared fish and bread over fire and invited the fishing Apostles to join Him can teach us a little bit more of what trusting in God is like. Jesus told Peter that a time will come when his hands would be stretched out and a belt fastened on him. Peter would be led to where he would rather not go. Such a docility in allowing the Lord to take charge is far deeper than the lack of possession. The higher we rise in power and prestige, the more intelligent we are with our qualifications, the more wealth we possess, the greater the pain of divestment will be.
The Cross is the price of following Christ. The present notion of a “moralistic therapeutic deity” is not the Christ on the way to Jerusalem. A belief that God exists to make us happy and feel good about ourselves is not the God of Sacred Scriptures. In our age, we seem to have confused consolation with feeling good. Consolation is a peace which can weather all kinds of storms because it keeps the eyes fixed on Jesus whom we follow and on the destination that we are moving to.
Discipleship is always radical in the service of the Lord. I remember an anecdote regarding St Bernadette who was constantly ill and was unable to do manual work. When a complaint was lodged against her, she replied calmly that “her work was to be sick”. She became a saint not because she saw Our Lady. She was raised to the altar of sanctity for her willing acceptance of sickness and suffering. This is not a counsel of “fatal resignation”. The first thing one ought to do when sick is to look for healing and for a cure to one’s ailment. What happens when all avenues have been exhausted? Would one dare to praise God for the vocation to be sick?
The example of Bernadette shows us that there is always a price to be paid. At its most profound it will require that one lays down one’s life. Thus, to follow Jesus, we have to be serious in prioritising Him. He comes first before all else. Secondly, the Cross will always be a part of discipleship. Thirdly, count the cost before we embark on the perilous journey of following Him. Fourthly, it is said that God does not call the qualified but He qualifies the called. In other words, if He calls you, trust Him because He will provide strength for the journey.
It is not that Jesus will not make the journey easier because He is capricious or cruel. Instead, there are powers that are arrayed against His Kingdom. Satan wants to overthrow the Kingdom of Christ and that renders discipleship dangerous. The call to discipleship is total and not merely a token. Thus, those who have followed Him fully will tell you that nothing in this world will ever take the place of the joy and the peace that comes from having fully surrendered their lives to Him.
Eating is not simply an act of survival. It is an existentially social and enriching exercise for building up relationships. Within a target-focused society, the meal is frequently reduced functionally to a kind of “by the way”. It just means that the meal serves as a meeting that allows for the organisation and execution of plans. It is practical and we know it as a power or a business lunch.
With this utilitarian convenience we easily forget that the meal is also the social expression our relationships. What do I mean by this? It is true that eating together can build relationships but more importantly, our social bonds must express themselves through meals together. A good example is the Lunar New Year Reunion Dinner amongst the Chinese. And this has implications for what we do here. In fact, more than just being practical, the sharing of a meal itself can pave the path for objectives to be achieved. It does not have to be as business-like as in reducing the meal to its existential function—eat to survive.
What a meal does is to give us a perspective on how to behave socially. In other words, what needs to be completed does not need to be “planned”. Not that planning or organising is bad but we innately or instinctively know what has to be done. That is the social strength of sharing a table. A good example of knowing what to do even if unplanned would be the Apostle Judas. Of course, it is not the most positive example and yet it illustrates the point that during the meal what had to be accomplished became clearer to Judas. In any case, the sharing of food can facilitate a clearer picture of the tasks ahead that require our attention.
But more than work, the meal is also a place to know who we are. It is a perfect setting for excellence. How so? Have you ever eaten at a gathering where Darwin’s evolutionary theory is played out? By that I mean the survival of the fittest. You observe the person in front of you in the queue scooping up the choicest parts of the dish but not only that, the person takes more than his share. A person of excellence is one who knows that there are people behind and he takes what he needs or even less than he needs because the small serving has to be shared fairly amongst those who are still behind in the long queue.
The excellent person is a model of the virtue described in the Gospel. It makes sense that the virtue of humility is set within the context of a meal. This is a joke from a friend who takes great pleasure in highlighting the obvious egoism of the Jesuits. As you may know, the Jesuits are supposedly noted for their “excellence”, after all their motto scream “ad maiorem Dei gloriam”. According to him, St Ignatius conceded that the Franciscans should be recognised for their poverty. Whereas the Dominicans should celebrate their erudite prowess. But hear this: let the Jesuits boast of their humility.
It is getting harder to conceive of this virtue given that we live a go-getter world. It strikes one as a feeble invitation to be trampled underfoot. What is humility if one were not to be crushed? The humility of the Gospel is to see ourselves as God sees us. It is not a form of self-hatred. Instead it is an attitude captured by a quotation apparently attributed to C.S. Lewis, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less”.[1] It sounds like a loser’s mantra but it is not. Humility recognises that my space, physical, psychological or spiritual, is not filled with me alone. Humility makes space for others and most especially for God. Therefore it is free from narcissism.
However, it would be next to impossible to live humility if God were not present. Why, you may ask. Only when there is a God will we be assured that death is not the final stamp in life. Without that guarantee, it follows quite logically that we would be considered losers if we have not achieved anything or that nobody knows or recognises our contributions to society. The present compulsion to “virtue-signal” is symptomatic of this loss of faith in the afterlife.[2]
With regard to cultivating the virtue of humility, what complicates is that both our political and economic spheres are knowledge-based. On the one hand, a good development from Wikipedia is the democratisation of knowledge. Everyone has finger-tip access to information. On the other hand, the shadow of this ease of access to information is an arrogance—a forgetfulness of who we truly are. Is it not true that now we have the facility to fact-check almost everything, provided that Big Tech or Google has not already censored what we should or should not know. The point is, in simple conversations, even as someone is speaking, the listener can fact-check without realising that the very act of verification is based on the humility of Truth and not on the might of “being right”, as in, “I am right because I possess MORE information”. As mentioned earlier, our challenge is that without God, we will always need to be ahead of everyone because being behind is considered to be a loser. No one wants to lose. And it is not even “kiasu” to have this fear.
In terms of knowledge, humility makes us more a servant of Truth than its master, meaning that Truth is not a possession like information is. Au contraire, humility is to be possessed by Truth. The etymology of the word “enthusiasm” actually clarifies what it means to be possessed. Not by the Devil. To be “enthused” means to be taken up by God. When we are possessed by Truth, we will be humbled by the beauty of Truth. An oft-repeated remark can help us appreciate humility and how it serves the Truth. People say that with regard to paper qualification, it is not so much what you know as whom you know. Access to the corridor of power is granted by the knowledge of personage or patronage. Or better expressed, the access to greatness is through “whom” we know.
In a manner of speaking, we have come full circle to where we began. Whom do we know and encounter in the Eucharist? The lie in an age of arrogance is that our greatest encounter is the discovery of the self. The humility of truth states otherwise that the ultimate realisation of the self is found in God alone which makes the Eucharist the perfect cure to this lie. We know ourselves best only in God as expressed by St Augustine’s famous quip: “O God, my soul is restless until it rests in You”. The more we are at home with God, the more we are taken up by Him, the more will we recognise our truer self.
So each time when you attend Mass, you may think that you are here as an individual but in truth we are here to worship God together and to be known by Him. The beauty of the social setting of the Eucharistic sacrifice is that God accepts us not as condemned but redeemed sinners. That is who we truly are. It makes sense that at the beginning of Mass, we acknowledge this truth through the “Confiteor”. In this humility of our collective admission, we are kept both grounded and exalted. Grounded because we know who we are. Sinners albeit redeemed and loved. Exalted because humility lifts us up so that in our nothingness, God can fill us more with Himself. In conclusion, in the Eucharist, we have this profound opportunity to know ourselves better in the Lord and in the humility of self-awareness we are invited to be submissive servants of Truth. There is no greater discovery than to know oneself a sinner, yet saved by Jesus Christ, sanctified in His Truth and sent to serve in humility.
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[1] It is more a quote by Pastor Rick Warren from his book “The Purpose-Driven Life”, than by C.S. Lewis. The quotation by Lewis is much longer and does not sound as quoted by Pastor Rick. If interested, check out. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 8, “The Great Sin,” Kindle location 1665
[2] We are compelled to public broadcast our good works for fear that unannounced, there would be nobody to validate our goodness. Faith in God and in the afterlife is an antidote to this fear. Even if nobody knows, God knows. He alone can judge our goodness.
We have arrived at a Sunday where the Readings seem to resonate with the universalist regime that in the last few decades has fired the world’s imagination. The first reading paints a better picture of peace, love and harmony better than any United Nations’ charter can ever produce. It projects a future when God will gather all peoples to Himself. God is a Saviour who wants to save all and not just a few.
To prove His sincerity, God will send a sign to remind the Israelites of His enduring love. In fact the history of salvation has been a history of God providing sign after sign. Abraham left Ur for the land that God had promised. Noah and the rainbow at the end of the Great Deluge. Moses and the parting of the Red Sea that allowed the Israelites to enter the Land of Milk and Honey. The list goes on and when the fullness of time came, He sent His only Son to die for us.
However, the 2nd Reading and the Gospel provides a more nuanced understanding of God’s generous invitation to His banquet. In the Letter to the Hebrews, the author speaks of God’s chastisement as a sign of His love. Amongst His children, punishment was never for the sake of itself. It was never capricious. Rather, God sometimes permits bad things to happen, even to good people, because there are lessons to be learnt. It would appear that allowing misfortune to befall a person is compatible with God’s love. But we are more accustomed to thinking that God’s love and bad luck are mutually exclusive.
The Gospel gives us a Jesus who speaks not of the multitude saved. Instead we should strive to enter through the narrow door or gate. Implicit in the definition of a door or a gate is the notion of restriction. What is the purpose of the door to a house if it were wide open. Doors and gates necessarily suggest that there is a narrow aperture as opposed to a wide-open gap.
If Isaiah in the 1st Reading, began with the idea of “all”, in the sense that God invites everyone to the table, then the narrow door in the Gospel implies that not everyone invited will make it through. What gives? When the speaker in the crowd asked Jesus who will go to heaven, it was a question which brings us into the heart of the present dilemma.
Today we are urged to embrace equality, diversity and inclusivity. These qualities belong to the moral compass of any society that prides itself as being on the right side of progress and modernity. The sinister shadow of these values is that they cannot be universal in an absolute manner. It means that they cannot be applied in all instances. Take for example, making sure that everyone is treated equally. We all have an impression swirling in our heads that justice means everyone must be treated equal. In the economic sphere, what happens to our natural abilities? Not everyone has the same talents. In order to ensure an equal outcome, it implies that those who are more talented would have to have their wings clipped. You live in this country and you should know what positive discrimination means. To guarantee the delusion of “equality” how many of your children have had to migrate to other countries? How many of you have told your children not to come back?
This is just one example whereby equality is not an absolute value. The same can be said of the other two. In terms of diversity and inclusivity, we instinctively “exclude” rapists or serial killers from the diverse and warm table of brotherhood, no? What has happened to both diversity and inclusivity is that the decision of “who is in and who is out” is determined by thought police who patrols our thought highways to ensure group think. A better question that may clarify the limits of our inclusion is this: “Who are we trying to include?”. In biblical times, that question was decided by the moral integrity of the person seeking entrance. Today we are mired in the quicksand of fighting who to be included. It is no longer a moral-ethical question. Instead one’s place at the table is determined by the requirement of society fitting into the idea of progress that is proven through diversity and inclusivity, no matter how far the criteria may have strayed from our moral principles. LGB has become LGBT, then LGBTQ and the alphabets can only grow longer. I am not criticising the act of inclusion but the word by definition has to be followed to its logical conclusion. Otherwise, it fails its own description. That being so, to be inclusive, we should maybe add in “P” for paedophiles or pederasts?
Hidden in the shadow of our inclusivity is that we have always been exclusive. We necessarily exclude. From race-based exclusion to gender-exclusion and now to thought-exclusion, meaning that, anyone who fails to meet the approved thoughts will be excluded. A good example now would be those who are anti-vaxxers. Are they not labelled immediately as nutters?
Beyond the morality of self-righteousness, in answering the question with entering through the narrow gate, Christ actually takes us away from the nomenclature or classification of inclusion and exclusion. For in Him, inclusion is not a confirmation of heaven. On the other hand, exclusion is not a condemnation of hell. Just because you have not robbed, killed or murdered is not a guarantee of heaven. On the contrary, to have robbed, killed or murdered does not mean one cannot be saved.
In other words, the narrow gate is really narrow not because it is exclusive but rather because it requires first and foremost our following Him which therefore renders inclusion and exclusion relational in the sense that we become “included” when we follow Jesus. To follow necessarily translates to belonging to Him, that is, to be counted as His with not just the rights accrued to us but also the duties expected of us. These demands will exclude accordingly some thoughts and behaviours. To follow Jesus is to be good and to do good. Our challenge is that we are used to a feel-good environment. It is wonderful to feel good but that itself is no indicator of our goodness.
Goodness comes because we follow Him and in Him, there is no tension between inclusion and exclusion. Everyone is included at the table of the Lord. No one is excluded. However, the inclusion is never on our terms but under the terms of the Lord and Saviour. Check out Dismas. He was crucified with Jesus, along with the other thief. He asked for salvation. He was promised it. But still he needed to pay the price of his sins. The price of salvation included the punishment for our sins.
It sounds rather calculative but if we translate the terms of inclusion as love, then we see how love is not directed at the self. It wills the good of the other. Here itself a conversion is needed. We think that love means we must love everything and accept anything. It is a fallacy to equate love as tolerance. Instead, love that seeks the good of the other must be tied to our salvation where the canon of our inclusion and exclusion is Jesus Christ Himself. We have been created in love and we are saved by love. In His love for us, He sacrificed His life for each one of us so that we can be with Him. He is measure of what baggage we ought to leave behind in order to enter the narrow gate so that we can be with Him forever.
Jesus taught the virtue of patience last Sunday and today He sounds a little impatient to launch the programme which He came to initiate. We can draw three points from the Readings. Firstly, there is a “purgatory” that we may need to acknowledge and embrace. Secondly, the perseverance to endure the journey. Finally, to keep alive the fire of the commitment we have made to Christ.
Our earthly sojourn is called the “valley of tears” for a good reason. Life is purgatorial because of the Fall. Ever since rebellion entered Man’s experience, obstacles have been weaved into the fabric of creation tainted by sin. But somehow along the way, we seemed to have acquired the assumption that life has to be convenient.
We observe this in Jeremiah, otherwise known as the Reluctant Prophet. He was not spared this expectation. Why would he want the inconvenience of prophesying and being thrown into a well? However, this attitude has become more acute because we have unwittingly signed into the habit of crass consumption. We are consumers and as such we expect convenience at every turn in life and this entitlement is extended to the realm of the spiritual life. Everyone wants it easy because God’s function is to smoothen my paths. If we survey the Gospel, Jesus was a bit like Jeremiah too. He knew that He would be facing the exodus of His life and even up to the last minute, in the Garden, still He asked if He could avoid the awaited fate in Jerusalem.
It is human to want to avoid pain and suffering but both the examples of Jeremiah and Jesus show us that as long as we have a divine destiny, a Jerusalem to set our face to, then purification is part of the pilgrimage there. The reality is that in mortal life, there will always be a purgatory. As a spiritual reality, purgatory does not begin only after we die. Instead, for many, it begins here in the valley of darkness.
The fire that Jesus brings has to be seen in this context. Even whilst breathing, one has to die to oneself. Jesus is not bringing a fire of “destruction” and mayhem. Rather, fire refers to the conversion that He invites us to and it is, by and large, is a life-long process. To understand Jesus’ impatience to set the world aflame, it may help if we were to consider how easily we waltz ourselves to hell. The descent into the netherworld is often not the result of commission but rather the consequence of omission. Think about it. Many of us are complacent who somehow think that we are good because we have not raped, robbed or rub out anyone. We fail to realise that we can go to hell not because of what we have done but because of what we have not done. As the Confiteor acknowledges: “in what I have failed to do”.
It sounds depressingly dire but in reality, it is an encouragement for each one of us to persevere and not be discouraged by the slow and painful pace of conversion. The purification that Jesus speaks of is to loosen the shackles that have weighed us down to the point of inertia. We need to move towards the light but frankly speaking it is more comfortable to remain in the dark. Thus, in the 2nd Reading, St Paul bids us turn to the cloud of witnesses. The Protestant condemnation of Catholic sacramentality is that we seemed to have over-emphasised the veneration of saints and blessed to the point of idolatry. A glaring result of this criticism is that Catholics tend to forget this massive cloud of witnesses. For fear of this Protestant critique, we fail to recognise that in heaven these saints and blessed are praying and urging us on.
These brothers and sisters in heaven—traditionally we call them the Church Triumphant—know that the purification of our thoughts, words and deeds is by far the hardest to achieve, not just personally but also socially. On the social front, Jesus mentioned division within the family because the minute you choose Him over all else, not only will you face our interior demons but you will also face a world that resists the grace of the Gospel. Sometimes from family members who do not share our enthusiasm. You may have experienced the subtle resistance where you are expected to tone down your fervour. Otherwise, you may be judged as holier than thou.
The peace promised by Jesus is not the absence of war. Instead, peace is the consequence of conversion, the fruit of our conviction and commitment to Christ. I am reminded of the massacre in 2015 of the 21 Copts in Libya. Imagine the magnitude of their fear given the awareness that ISIL terrorists routinely and mercilessly execute their captives. It is said Marie Antoinette’s hair turned white while she awaited her beheading. Yet as the swords slid their throats, all that came from their lips was simply: “Jesus, help me”.
Stepping into their shoes, perhaps we sense the conversion from panic to peace as these men surrendered their future to the Lord. Many of us will never meet such a violent death but suffice to say, any conversion that brings us closer to God requires a death of some kind. A dying to self to begin with.
The fire that changes the world does not come from the overthrow of government or structural change. It comes from our personal conversion. We become powerful not by virtue of the strength we possess or can muster. Rather we are powerful by virtue of Christ, whose Holy Spirit and fire can do a lot more than we imagine. Last week, we celebrated St John Marie Vianney. He was merely a priest from a nondescript village of Ars. Might as well be the arse of the world where the villagers believed neither God nor the Church. But he managed to convert multitudes just by sitting in the confessional. At the end of his life, it was said that at least 100K per annum would flock to Ars just to catch a glimpse of the man, to hear him preach and to have him listen to their confession.
What this indicates is that the good we desire for the world must begin with inner conversion. In itself, this is a tough journey and if we are committed to Christ, then be prepared for purgatory on earth. It helps if we recognise that life on earth is not a bed of roses, no matter how “manufactured convenience” seems to want to promise it. When we give our lives to Christ, the Cross will cast its shadow on us: prolonged sickness, unfair treatment, loss of personal fortune or untimely death. The shadow does not refer to the price of our past sins where we may have over-indulged in food or drink and partied like mad. When we are 60 and above, the chickens of our past sins will come home to roost. No that is not the Cross. When one has led a healthy and virtuous life but has to suffer innocently, that is the Cross and the purgatory which only through perseverance and trust in Jesus as the ultimate Saviour that will win us our place in heaven.
We lingered with John the Baptist for two consecutive Sundays. At our first encounter, the Baptiser reminded us of the need for conversion and repentance. Last week, he stood as the beacon of joy, a joy that flowed from the recognition that humanity’s salvation was near. Today, we shift our attention to Mary, the Mother of Our Lord.
If John the Baptist represents the last of the Old Testament prophets, then Mary will have situated us within the age of the New Testament. The covenant with David will come to fruition in the mystery of a humble peasant girl in Nazareth. In the 1st Reading, David was ambitious to house God in a temple fitting for His divine majesty. But God could not be outdone. Instead, He gave David a house, a dynasty to last forever. The promise to remain forever with David has come true in the womb of Mary. Her “fiat” or “yes” to God has exalted her womb into the new Ark of the Covenant.
The focus of Mary might look like a devotional excess from one side of Catholicism. The modern discomfort with this Marian exuberance may stem from our deflated self-worth rather than from the fear of idolatry. This accusation of exaggerated affection emanates from the air of anti-heroism[1], meaning that, we want Our Lady to be like us—sad and sordid. You see this in the modern reinterpretation of the Marian motif. The most famous of whom is our songbird Madonna—who dresses up like a whore in some of her performances.
But the truth is that our Marian emphasis is never enough. Why? The person of Mary must be seen in the light of salvation. She stands as a symbol of our need for the Saviour. Here again, the other side of our Catholic sensibility might be offended. She is, after all, the Immaculate Conception—the woman born without Original Sin, the last person in need of salvation. How can she then symbolise our need for the Saviour?
I know, this is a terribly misleading statement. Precisely that it is paradoxical that in Mary, who played such a pivotal role in the life of Jesus, that the offer of salvation was given to the only person who appeared to have no need of a rescue. It is a false paradox.[2] Why? Not even she, whom William Wordsworth exalted as “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”, is exempted from the need for redemption proving to us that salvation is a serious business. We need the Saviour.
This need is acute even if we did not realise it. In those days of old, people were aware of God’s faithfulness as in they live more precariously—droughts, earthquakes, storms, and truly needed to depend on God to face the unknown. Today, we have our predictable and controllable modern amenities. Clap and voilà, we are lit. Practically everything we want is at the touch of our finger tips. Until now. For many are vaguely conscious of God’s presence in the sense that we have Him at a comfortable place where He is useful. Many turn to God only as a last resort because it is more reliable to depend on ourselves and our capabilities. For the intractable problems with the desirable solutions, if God answers, well and good. If not, we have not lost more than we already have.
This is our utilitarian blindness. We believe that our problems originate from a brokenness in the systems, be it in the economic, social or political realms. As such we can fix them. These various structures are good because they belong to our human ingenuity and intelligence. And they are all gifts from God. They help organise our lives. When we have poverty, we try our level best to solve it through our economic, political and social policies forgetting that there is “brokenness” that cannot be fixed no matter what. For example, we believe that if we recycled enough or use less resources or whatever they may be, then the earth will return to that green and lush planet that has a place for everyone. It may be true, but it is not the entire truth.
Our complex arrangements, good that they are, they are not our Saviours. The classical case of the communist project, with its planned economy was an attempt to recreate paradise on earth but it has instead resulted in untold misery. It is the same for people, who tired of unhappiness, escaped to another place to establish a more perfect system. They will soon find themselves entangled by the reality of sin—jealousy and greed.[3] These sins point out that human nature needs a Saviour. We cannot save ourselves. Only God can save us.
However, we are struggling to trust in God. We rather trust our machinations. In fact, this pandemic is somewhat a proof that we are still dependent on ourselves. Instead of also turning to God more fervently, we seemed to have settled into some sort of paralysis as we come to terms with the uncertainty of the new normal, so it seems. Placing our hope in the vaccine has lulled us into a kind of false security because unwittingly we are waiting eagerly, aided by the “saviour” of a vaccine, to return to the normalcy we know as if we had no need of conversion or better still, no necessity of salvation. Business as usual is our default expectations.
It is only a matter of days before Christmas. If to be saved is the natural and necessary setting for all mankind, Mary included, then Mary is truly our model. She accepted the will of God even though it carried with it risks and dangers, but she relied on the everlasting promise of God to David that He would be faithful. The significance of Mary’s "fiat" is the dawn of human salvation. From the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel, Mary now plays a prominent role in the salvific history of humanity. But, not only that.
We have a facility of separating that which should be an interior movement into a purely exterior event. What do I mean? Christmas becomes just an occasion, almost accidental (and not essential) to who we are. That way, it can become an excuse to celebrate but not really an invitation to each one of us to be “Christmas”. For the Father’s choice of Mary means each one of us is also highly favoured or blessed and chosen. Not necessarily to be the biological mother of Jesus but that we become the fertile spiritual soil for the Word to fall and germinate. As the antiphon declares “Drop down dew from above, you heavens, and let the clouds rain down the Just One; let the earth be opened and bring forth a Saviour”. The Saviour is born of a Virgin. He awaits to be born in our hearts.
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[1] Think "Suicide Squad". Every one of our heroes is a criminal…
[2] In view of her role as the Mother of God, she had been saved already by merits of Jesus Christ. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception explains it.
[3] Think any “perfect” groupings where soon enough there will be jealousy etc…
